| | January 28, 2026 WARNED BY THE BLACK HAND.
Grand Avenue Italian Grocer Gets Threatening Letter Demanding $300 on Pain of Death.
A letter signed "Black Hand Socialist" was received yesterday by Tony Jordan, an Italian, who has a grocery store at 507 Grand avenue. He took the letter to police headquarters at 8 o'clock last night and asked for protection. The letter is as follows:
"Mr. Tony: You better pay us $300 or we kill you. Be sure be Second and Grand avenue 12 o'clock a. m. (Signed) BLACK HAND SOCIALIST."
Lieutenant Ryan turned Jordan and the letter over to Benjamin Goode and John McCall, plain clothes men. They arranged to meet Jordan at Second and Grand a few minutes before midnight last night, but Jordan did not appear. He evidently was badly frightened, as he locked his grocery store and left the building.
Other Italians heard of the letter last night and there was a general alarm sent out by them. They gathered in groups in Little Italy last night to talk it over. The frequency of these letters and the efforts made to blow up one or two places has caused extreme nervousness in the Italian settlement.
No "Black Hand Socialist" appeared at Second and Grand avenue at 12 o'clock a. m. (midnight), so far as the officers were able to learn.Labels: black hand, crime, Grand avenue, grocers, immigrants, Second street, Socialists January 15, 2026 SOCIALISTS WILL PROTEST.
Call Mass Meeting to Discuss Status of Political Refugees.
Handbills calling a protest mass meeting to be held in the Commercial Travelers' hall at Twelfth and Central streets Sunday afternoon have been issued by scholastic bodies of Kansas City.
The object of the meeting will be, as described in the circular, to protest against the deportation of certain political refugees from Russia and Mexico. The handbill is made up of an appeal to the American's love for justice and liberty and prays protection from the "autocracy of the tsar and of Diaz of Mexico."
The bill is signed by the Kansas City Socialist Club, the Workingmen's Circle and the Workingmen's Hebrew Progressive Self-Education Club.Labels: Central street, Mexico, Socialists, Twelfth street October 27, 2025 EVOLUTION IS THE BASE OF SOCIALISM.
DECLARES A SPEAKER OF MANY TRITE MAXIMS.
Arthur Morrow Lewis of Chicago Ad- dresses Followers of That Economic School -- He Will Speak Again Tonight.
Civilization has not made the most of itself, according to Arthur Morrow Lewis of Chicago, in his lecture on "Socialism and Science," at the Academy of Music last night. The body of his lecture was taken up with an exegesis of the Darwinian theory of evolution, which the speaker said, constitutes the principal prerequisite of socialistic philosophy.
His words were spicily sprinkled with tersely put aphorisms that wouldn't make dull reading in some of the smartly written best-sellers, to wit"
"The desire to be a millionaire is the propensity of a hog.
"Capitalists live without working, while you work without living.
"We are not dreamers of dreams, crying for the moon.
"The giraffe does about as much thinking as the average workingman.
"We know that when Bryan and Hearst rail at the trusts, they are beating their wooden heads against a granite wall.
"We look even beyond the brotherhood of man, and proclaim the brotherhood of all things that live -- a greater idea than any religion ever dreamed of.
"The truth of evolution is rejected nowhere, so far as I know, unless it be by the Salvation Army.
"The diminutive cohippus of ages ago was the ancestor of our great present-day thoroughbred horse, and the jungle fowl, progenitor of our barnyard chickens, is still cackling in the tropic wilderness.
"Let a man among us lift up his head and announce an unheard of truth, and we will persecute him, as our fathers did the pioneers of civilization.
"The mob -- you are the mob, that is until election day is over. For the brief present, you are intelligent and sovereign citizens.
"They say that civilization was created by a handful of men and that it is only just that a handful should control it, but I notice the handful that created it is not the same that now owns it."
The speaker closed with an impassioned recitation from Victor Hugo on the breaking up of the frozen river Neva when the peasantry had built a city on its surface of ice.
Mr. Lewis will speak tonight on "The Triumph of Socialism."Labels: Chicago, politics, Socialists, visitors February 26, 2026 SOCIALISTS TO NAME TICKET.
City Convention Is Called for Next Friday Night.
The Socialists of Kansas City will hold a convention at their headquarters, 1400 Grand avenue, next Friday night and nominate a full ticket for the city election with the exception of ward aldermen.
Ex-Mayor John C. Chase of Haverhil, Mass., will lecture on socialism at the Academy of Music, 1223 McGee street, tonight at 8 o'clock. He is the only Socialist mayor ever elected in an American city and he will talk on municipal affairs from his own experience as mayor. During the past four weeks the Socialists of Kansas City have distributed 400,000 Socialist papers in the city in an effort to add strength to their ticket in the city election.Labels: Grand avenue, McGee street, politics, Socialists, visitors May 30, 2025 SOCIALISTS GET A CHANCE.
May Hold Meetings in Grand Ave- nue's Open District.
James Howard, perpetual president of the local order of Social Socialists, appealed yesterday to the police board for permission to hold meetings in the downtown district. He complained that the police had run his party off Grand, south of Eleventh street, where permission had been given to them to hold forth.
"You let other political meetings be held on the street corners," said Howard.
"Yes," granted Mayor Beardsley, "but that is only when the campaign is going on."
"Our campaign is always going on," promptly retorted the Social Socialist.
After the commissioners stopped laughing they decided unanimously, "That is exactly the trouble," and suggested that the perpetual president try and get a word in edgewise between the Salvationists, the Bakerites and the other little crowds that nightly meet on Grand avenue.Labels: Eleventh street, Grand avenue, Mayor Beardsley, police board, politics, Socialists | | | | | 
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